1.This Act may be cited as
the Congressional Tribute to Dr.
Norman E. Borlaug Act of 2006
.
2.Congress finds as follows:
(1)Dr. Norman E.
Borlaug, was born in Iowa where he grew up on a family farm, and received his
primary and secondary education.
(2)Dr. Borlaug
attended the University of Minnesota where he received his B.A. and Ph.D.
degrees and was also a star NCAA wrestler.
(3)For the past 20
years, Dr. Borlaug has lived in Texas where he is a member of the faculty of
Texas A&M University.
(4)Dr. Borlaug also
serves as President of the Sasakawa Africa Association.
(5)Dr. Borlaug's
accomplishments in terms of bringing radical change to world agriculture and
uplifting humanity are without parallel.
(6)In the immediate
aftermath of World War II, Dr. Borlaug spent 20 years working in the poorest
areas of rural Mexico. It was there that Dr. Borlaug made his breakthrough
achievement in developing a strand of wheat that could exponentially increase
yields while actively resisting disease.
(7)With the active
support of the governments involved, Dr. Borlaug's green
revolution
uplifted hundreds of thousands of the rural poor in Mexico
and saved hundreds of millions from famine and outright starvation in India and
Pakistan.
(8)Dr. Borlaug's
approach to wheat production next spread throughout the Middle East. Soon
thereafter his approach was adapted to rice growing, increasing the number of
lives Dr. Borlaug has saved to more than a billion people.
(9)In 1970, Dr.
Borlaug received the Nobel Prize, the only person working in agriculture to
ever be so honored. Since then he has received numerous honors and awards
including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Public Service Medal, the
National Academy of Sciences' highest honor, and the Rotary International Award
for World Understanding and Peace.
(10)At age 91, Dr.
Borlaug continues to work to alleviate poverty and malnutrition. He currently
serves as president of Sasakawa Global 2000 Africa Project, which seeks to
extend the benefits of agricultural development to the 800,000,000 people still
mired in poverty and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa.
(11)Dr. Borlaug
continues to serve as Chairman of the Council of Advisors of the World Food
Prize, an organization he created in 1986 to be the Nobel Prize for Food
and Agriculture
and which presents a $250,000 prize each October at a
Ceremony in Des Moines, Iowa, to the Laureate who has made an exceptional
achievement similar to Dr. Borlaug's breakthrough 40 years ago. In the almost
20 years of its existence, the World Food Prize has honored Laureates from
Bangladesh, India, China, Mexico, Denmark, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, the
United Kingdom, and the United States.
(12)Dr. Borlaug has
saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived, and likely has saved
more lives in the Islamic world than any other human being in history.
(13)Due to a
lifetime of work that has led to the saving and preservation of an untold
amount of lives, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug is deserving of America’s highest
civilian award: the congressional gold medal.
3.
(a)The President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the
Speaker of the House of Representatives are authorized to make appropriate
arrangements for the presentation, on behalf of Congress, of a gold medal of
appropriate design, to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, in recognition of his enduring
contributions to the United States and the world.
(b)For the purpose of the presentation referred to in
subsection (a), the Secretary of the Treasury (in this Act referred to as the
Secretary
) shall strike a gold medal with suitable emblems,
devices, and inscriptions, to be determined by the Secretary.
4.Under such regulations
as the Secretary may prescribe, the Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in
bronze of the gold medal struck under section 3 at a price sufficient to cover
the cost thereof, including labor, materials, dies, use of machinery, and
overhead expenses, and the cost of the gold medal.
5.Status as
national medals
(a)The medal struck under
this Act is a national medal for purposes of chapter 51 of title 31, United
States Code.
(b)For purposes of section
5134 of title 31, United States Code, all duplicate medals struck under this
Act shall be considered to be numismatic items.
6.Authority to use
fund amounts; Proceeds of sale
(a)Authority to
use fund amountsThere are authorized to be charged against the
United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund, such sums as may be necessary to pay
for the cost of the medals struck under this Act.
(b)Amounts received from the sale of duplicate bronze medals
under section 4 shall be deposited in the United States Mint Public Enterprise
Fund.